China Will Allow Phone Co’s To Select 3G Standards

After China’s unofficial 3G commercial launch in April, selling heavily subsidized TD-SCDMA phones in eight cities, the Chinese government, according to Bloomberg – has decided to allow phone companies to choose what technologies to use when they offer 3G generation services.

High-speed mobile-phone licenses, vice-minister at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said, will be issued to carriers after the nation’s telecommunications companies complete a government-mandated plan to reorganize the industry.

At the moment, China Mobile Communications Corp. – with its massive 407 million GSM mobile subscriber base ; dominates in absolute terms the chinese telecom market. China Unicom and fixed-line operators China Telecom and China Netcom continue to compete hard in every aspect of 3G technology against China Mobile. Clearly, these attempts are aimed at stopping China Mobile from turning into a de facto monopoly.

In May of last year, China adopted wideband code division multiple access, or WCDMA, and CDMA2000 technologies for the nation’s third-generation mobile-phone network.

Despite all the happy talk about China’s own 3G, the experience has been a complicated if not an unsuccessful one for China’s telecom sector. According to the International Olympic Committee, the inability to offer a widely-supported 3G network was the only infrastructure target Beijing failed to meet.